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Advertising giant WPP has bought IT consultancy and services firm Salmon Group from holding company Okam Ltd for an undisclosed sum. Salmon is a very old Little British Battler, formed back in 1989, which has grown to employ 420 people today in the UK, China and Australia. In the year to October 2012 it made revenue of £34.3m with gross assets of £11.3m.Image may be NSFW.
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Salmon will now become part of WPP Digital, which is a £6bn revenue operation that stated aim is to make 'acquisitions and strategic investments in companies that improve [WPP’s] understanding of the digital space and provide access for WPP companies and their clients to a portfolio of digital experts’.
With Salmon on board, WPP Digital will now has an investment portfolio of 32 companies and technology platforms offering a broad range of activities and services in the emerging multichannel/digital space. These include digital marketing firm 24/7 Media, social network management player Buddy Media, digital production player Deliver, e-commerce services firm Syzygy, big data marketing analytics player nPario and marketing services platform Fabric, the latter of which we discussed in our BusinessProcessViews analyst note Infosys and WPP partner for business platforms, and which is an impressive piece of technology.
Salmon will boost WPP’s capabilities in consulting, design, delivery and support services mainly for UK retailers like Argos, Game, Halfords, Kiddicare, Morrisons, Selfridges and Premier Farnell, for whom Salmon provides e-commerce services, and which WPP sees growing at 10% annually in the UK. CE Sir Martin Sorrell’s strategy at WPP is to build out a set of capabilities that are ‘tightly-integrated…across both marketing and technology [that] help both the CMO and CIO deliver customer-centric multi-channel solutions.’ It is very early days in this evolving space, but with its advertising, media and growing technology assets, WPP is very placed to benefit from the multi-channel shift. One to keep an eye on.
